When I set up my wireless network, it will be open and I will be happy for others to use it. I consider this a social good - and had assumed that most folks who left their networks open were just being good neighbours.
Given that the law is moving in a different direction - it would be great to have a more formal way of sharing.
How about a google overlay of open (intentionally) wifi spots, or a register, or a protocol?
I believe (from hearsay in the field) that the reason cold fusion has been investigated so long is that oil companies in the US are required to invest in alternative energy research.
Where better for them to put their money than in an area firmly believed by most nuclear pyhsicists to have a near zero chance of challenging oil.
'can Microsoft and other browser makers be sued for being able to submit credit card info through their browsers'
The patent is only for payments where the purchaser's credit card details are not revealed to the vendor. Standard payments to major sites where credit card details are submitted through the browser are not covered.
Third party sites (like worldpay) perhaps come under the description
Worldpay - may give us an idea to get round the patent though - If credit card details are _sometimes_ revealed to the vendor, then we have a different kettle of fish. In worldpay's case, I believe that happens in cases of fraud.
this market has broken down because of overuse of a free resource (transmission) by generators.
Why not simply adjust the market to reflect true costs - if california wants to buy electricity from new york - it will cost more because it has to be transferred further.
This would allow balancing in decisions to build generation locally or build more transmission.
Price is roughly equivalent to a similar spec palmpilot. You get a phone built in (I know many folks on this forum like having lots of devices strapped to their belt - this is not for them!).
And then you're committed to a 1 year phone contract.
For those that want convergence (no more need to sync your phone and palmpilot) plus all the other stuff that you get from an OS5 palm (Mp3, lots of software) - this is a pretty good deal.
Prices below are for the UK - but if anything, there seem to be better deals in the US.
GBP180 (from mobilshop)
payment spread over 4 months, they throw in 200mins/month for the first 4 months - and then you're free to take any orange tarrif (12 months total committment).
Alternatively, you can pay GBP20 more (spread over 4 months) and you get an extra 200mins/month for the first 4 months!
Minimum committment after 4 months is GBP15/month for which you can get 30 any-network mins and 30 txts/month
Perhaps I'm missing the point here - but don't most homes have lots more than 5m^2 of roofspace?
I'd guess order of 100m^2 would be more normal.
So for the small percentage of a city that is high-rise, you need to generate your electircity elsewhere - but for most of the people who live in 1-2 storey houses - area doesn't sound like a problem.
A true free market should respond to consumer needs. So - if it costs 10x more to provide failure free power and consumers don't want to pay 10x, they will not get it. Similarly, companies that are power dependant would pay more and get more reliability.
A shared infrastructure may make it hard to deliver differing levels of reliability - which is where a central body (government usually) comes in and specifies the requirements.
In most cases, the government has simply demanded low cost electricity provision. In this case, the companies have succesfully reduced the costs by actions such as stripping out excess generating capacity (in the UK at least)
If the government had required high reliability power supply (by imposing huge fines for any blackouts) then the companies would have optimised to a more reliable (and more costly) network with greater redundancy of network and generation capacity.
A market is powerful - but it will normally give you what you ask for and no more!
"In a proper physics experiment all the quantities that affect the result have to be measured. In this one the frequency of the microwaves is taken for granted"
This seems wrong to me. Experiments seek to measure the unknown using the known.
Why is it less valid to measure the frequency by looking at the back (another person has measured the frequency and marked it on the device) than it is valid to measure the distance by comparing to a ruler where another person has has measured a set of lengths and marked them on your stick of wood.
More generally - do you expect scientists to measure the speed of light and the charge of an electron for every experiment they perform? If c and e cannot be taken as known - how about Pi?
If science is about accumulating knowledge - it seems odd to throw it all away for each experiment...
I don't think you know how to use a palm...
on
New Treo Reviewed
·
· Score: 1
One of the things I love about palm is that you can often customise it to work for you. I agree the treo is an imperfect design - feels like it was rushed out. The 600 by all accounts so far is well integrated.
Having said that you give the 270 (which I love!) an overly hard deal...
The flimsy case is the tip of the iceberg. The fliptop lids on Treo 300s or 270s always break off. When you flip shut the lid, it depresses a couple keypad keys (the "q" and the "p") and enters those letters into whatever application you were running. Also, several aspects of the current models, if not fixed, would make this new model inexcusably flawed, and the article doesn't really shed light on those problems:
1. The tiny keypad buttons are used to dial phone numbers. But, there are no tactile indicators to differentiate the number keys from the other keys. That means you can't feel around for something like the little bumps that you have on a qwerty keyboard on the "f" and "j" home keys in order to dial without looking. The picture of the new 600 indiciates this has not been fixed.
You can fix this by loosening the screw on the back - any good geek will find this solution in Treocentral!
2. The keypad and backlight don't light up without closing and opening or turning on the phone. If you are on a call, and the backlight times off (which happens after about 10 seconds), you can't see the screen or use the keypad in the dark. This means if it is dark, you can't make a call that requires the pressing of any buttons, such as a call to check your voicemail, unless you have memorized exactly where the featureless keys are that double as phone number keys. Also, you can't look stuff up.
Or unless you use the 'light on' double click on the power on button - or unless you use the light on hack that keeps the light on when you're on a call
3. Unlike the Kyocera SmartPhone, the PDA function and the phone function do not share phone number data, except through an incredibly klunky speed dial application (contrary to the reviewer's baseless hype). That means there is a great waste of energy after syncing with your palm or outlook contacts database, since you have to manually copy and paste phone numbers with your stylus and the keypad in a maneuver that always requires both hands.
This is really weak - -I believe the 600 fixes this!
4. The Treo's speed dial application has to be loaded by pushing a button with your left hand, and then you use the stylus on the screen or you have to use a jog dial that is imprecise and requires you to be looking at your phone. Thus speed-dialing usually requires two steps, it requires two hands, and you need to be looking at the phone. A traditional cell phone lets you speed dial by holding a number key or thumb dialing a two-digit number and pressing enter with the same hand and no need to look.
True - though you could save one step by launching speed dial from flip open.
5. The SIM card in the GMS model has a phonebook that does not merge with the PDA phone book, so when you move from a traditional SIM card phone, you don't get to transfer your numbers over to your palm contact system.
Crap - -I agree
6. The web browser is garbage in so many ways that I can barely start. Let me just mention that you have to use both the keyboard and the stylus to use it. Entering URLs always requires two hands. It takes 60 seconds to start up and "connect". The phone function dumps you out irretrievably, erasing your session.
Though there are lots of other browsers you could download (I keep hoping Opera will release a palm version)
7. The desktop app requires a two-key combo to activate (unless you replace a quickstart button function with the desktop app)...Which you easily can!
8. Nobody can hear me speaking into the off-center mouthpiece if I hold the phone on the wrong side of my face.
Regarding driver's compensating for percieved car safety by driving faster etc. I heard a great thought experiment.
If you want to make driving really safe - you should make it compulsory to have a metal pointed spike attached to the steering wheel and aimed at the driver's heart.
If you wrote something, be it music or software or whatever, and sold it for retail, and then found out it's been traded all over the Internet, would you be excited with glee at the "exchange of culture," or realize that the way you make your living is being cheated from you because there are people out there who are so used to the convenience of downloading whatever they please that they have justified it to themselves to get rid of their guilt?
You wouldn't object (or at least have any leagal right to object) if I published a portrait that i took of you around the world. Nor if I published a home video that featured you walking in a town (where I just happened to observe you).
Some artists consider the way they walk through a town to be important conceptual art. As society, we do not see fit to allow them to control the distribution of a record of their movement.
Similarly - we do not see fit to consider allowing people to control the distribution of their images (newspapers would struggle with crowd scenes)
With music - the question of how much control the artist should have is not trivial. Should they be allowed to control access to their private concerts? Should they be allowed to control who listens to them if they sing in the street? Should they be allowed to control the distribution of a recording of either of those?
As a society - we grant control to artists because we want to encourage them financially. There is an inherent tradeoff though - the control we grant them limits the access of the society.
One could argue that it would be good for society if we allowed free distribution of any recording and therefore 'forced' musicians to make their money by playing live / selling autographed CDs / being sponsored by Pepsi. This would probably mean fewer mega-rich superbands and more public performance. Probably less investment by large corporations - perhaps more investment by bands that felt they had a chance to get a piece of the pie.
Certainly cultures have existed where there was no protection of artistic creations such as songs. Rich oral traditions have evolved. Singers have gained kudos - but probably not become mega-rich!
I'm not advocating a position here - just trying to argue that the issue is less clear then it appears from within our current system!
He might have been mucking around with a wing for three years. I'll bet my bottom dollar it was not something that people would call training (e.g. concerted effort to develop skills to handle wing). The main thing to take from all the claims about speed, danger, etc is that this is a stuntman with an eye for publicity. Of course his life was in danger every second. Of course he trained for 3 years.
The best way to get all the ISPs playing like SBC is to switch provider - and write an e-mail to each (preferably to the highest placed contact you can find) saying that you're switching because you trust SBC to defend your privacy.
Very few customers communicate with companies - it therefore takes surprisingly few communications to start shifting opinion.
Visa and Masercard enforce strict rules that say that if you don't get the goods and services you paid for, your credit card issuer must deduct the charge from your statement and send it back to the seller.
If you buy a PC which includes an entitlement to a refund - and you don't get your refund - you should be able to charge the $199 back to the seller. This will involve calling up to dispute the charge and then (probably) writing a letter explaining why you have not got what you paid for.
I have had huge success down this route when car repair shops have charged me for work that turns out not to have been done.
The great thing is that it's simple and avoids the legal process. Your credit card company passes the buck back to the seller and it becomes the seller's problem to prove that you owe them money.
Sometimes it is worthwhile going for the best technology rather than the newest!
seriously though - I understand CDMA is progressing faster with data transport, but GSM is much closer to providing a global standard with all the interoperabality benefits that brings.
I own a cd, I can use it My wife and I own a cd, we can ues it My wife, my kids and I own a cd - can we all use it? My extended family? My neighbourhood? My community?
where do you draw the line? Based on blood? Based in shared financial comittments? If the latter; My company/commune/cooperative owns a cd...
The judge would have to strike it down, but I'd love to see the tortured reasoning that would be required.
Slashdot Mirror
When I set up my wireless network, it will be open and I will be happy for others to use it. I consider this a social good - and had assumed that most folks who left their networks open were just being good neighbours.
Given that the law is moving in a different direction - it would be great to have a more formal way of sharing.
How about a google overlay of open (intentionally) wifi spots, or a register, or a protocol?
Thoughts?
I believe (from hearsay in the field) that the reason cold fusion has been investigated so long is that oil companies in the US are required to invest in alternative energy research.
Where better for them to put their money than in an area firmly believed by most nuclear pyhsicists to have a near zero chance of challenging oil.
good looks are vital.
You only have to see the huge popularity of skins for all sorts of apps to believe this.
They typically add no functionality - but are extremely popular.
If functionality was everything - noone would ever download a skin
What surprised me is that China & Iran haven't simply blocked access to anonymiser.
Either they're not serious about their censorship - or as MemoPhage suggests - they just let it run as a honeypot.
'can Microsoft and other browser makers be sued for being able to submit credit card info through their browsers'
The patent is only for payments where the purchaser's credit card details are not revealed to the vendor. Standard payments to major sites where credit card details are submitted through the browser are not covered.
Third party sites (like worldpay) perhaps come under the description
Worldpay - may give us an idea to get round the patent though - If credit card details are _sometimes_ revealed to the vendor, then we have a different kettle of fish. In worldpay's case, I believe that happens in cases of fraud.
I may be missing something here but..
this market has broken down because of overuse of a free resource (transmission) by generators.
Why not simply adjust the market to reflect true costs - if california wants to buy electricity from new york - it will cost more because it has to be transferred further.
This would allow balancing in decisions to build generation locally or build more transmission.
Price is roughly equivalent to a similar spec palmpilot. You get a phone built in (I know many folks on this forum like having lots of devices strapped to their belt - this is not for them!).
And then you're committed to a 1 year phone contract.
For those that want convergence (no more need to sync your phone and palmpilot) plus all the other stuff that you get from an OS5 palm (Mp3, lots of software) - this is a pretty good deal.
Prices below are for the UK - but if anything, there seem to be better deals in the US.
GBP180 (from mobilshop)
payment spread over 4 months, they throw in 200mins/month for the first 4 months - and then you're free to take any orange tarrif (12 months total committment).
Alternatively, you can pay GBP20 more (spread over 4 months) and you get an extra 200mins/month for the first 4 months!
Minimum committment after 4 months is GBP15/month for which you can get 30 any-network mins and 30 txts/month
Perhaps I'm missing the point here - but don't most homes have lots more than 5m^2 of roofspace?
I'd guess order of 100m^2 would be more normal.
So for the small percentage of a city that is high-rise, you need to generate your electircity elsewhere - but for most of the people who live in 1-2 storey houses - area doesn't sound like a problem.
Like with some kind of DRM system built right into your handy version of office.
Palladium?
A true free market should respond to consumer needs. So - if it costs 10x more to provide failure free power and consumers don't want to pay 10x, they will not get it. Similarly, companies that are power dependant would pay more and get more reliability.
A shared infrastructure may make it hard to deliver differing levels of reliability - which is where a central body (government usually) comes in and specifies the requirements.
In most cases, the government has simply demanded low cost electricity provision. In this case, the companies have succesfully reduced the costs by actions such as stripping out excess generating capacity (in the UK at least)
If the government had required high reliability power supply (by imposing huge fines for any blackouts) then the companies would have optimised to a more reliable (and more costly) network with greater redundancy of network and generation capacity.
A market is powerful - but it will normally give you what you ask for and no more!
"In a proper physics experiment all the quantities that affect the result have to be measured. In this one the frequency of the microwaves is taken for granted"
This seems wrong to me. Experiments seek to measure the unknown using the known.
Why is it less valid to measure the frequency by looking at the back (another person has measured the frequency and marked it on the device) than it is valid to measure the distance by comparing to a ruler where another person has has measured a set of lengths and marked them on your stick of wood.
More generally - do you expect scientists to measure the speed of light and the charge of an electron for every experiment they perform? If c and e cannot be taken as known - how about Pi?
If science is about accumulating knowledge - it seems odd to throw it all away for each experiment...
One of the things I love about palm is that you can often customise it to work for you. I agree the treo is an imperfect design - feels like it was rushed out. The 600 by all accounts so far is well integrated.
..Which you easily can!
Having said that you give the 270 (which I love!) an overly hard deal...
The flimsy case is the tip of the iceberg. The fliptop lids on Treo 300s or 270s always break off. When you flip shut the lid, it depresses a couple keypad keys (the "q" and the "p") and enters those letters into whatever application you were running. Also, several aspects of the current models, if not fixed, would make this new model inexcusably flawed, and the article doesn't really shed light on those problems:
1. The tiny keypad buttons are used to dial phone numbers. But, there are no tactile indicators to differentiate the number keys from the other keys. That means you can't feel around for something like the little bumps that you have on a qwerty keyboard on the "f" and "j" home keys in order to dial without looking. The picture of the new 600 indiciates this has not been fixed.
You can fix this by loosening the screw on the back - any good geek will find this solution in Treocentral!
2. The keypad and backlight don't light up without closing and opening or turning on the phone. If you are on a call, and the backlight times off (which happens after about 10 seconds), you can't see the screen or use the keypad in the dark. This means if it is dark, you can't make a call that requires the pressing of any buttons, such as a call to check your voicemail, unless you have memorized exactly where the featureless keys are that double as phone number keys. Also, you can't look stuff up.
Or unless you use the 'light on' double click on the power on button - or unless you use the light on hack that keeps the light on when you're on a call
3. Unlike the Kyocera SmartPhone, the PDA function and the phone function do not share phone number data, except through an incredibly klunky speed dial application (contrary to the reviewer's baseless hype). That means there is a great waste of energy after syncing with your palm or outlook contacts database, since you have to manually copy and paste phone numbers with your stylus and the keypad in a maneuver that always requires both hands.
This is really weak - -I believe the 600 fixes this!
4. The Treo's speed dial application has to be loaded by pushing a button with your left hand, and then you use the stylus on the screen or you have to use a jog dial that is imprecise and requires you to be looking at your phone. Thus speed-dialing usually requires two steps, it requires two hands, and you need to be looking at the phone. A traditional cell phone lets you speed dial by holding a number key or thumb dialing a two-digit number and pressing enter with the same hand and no need to look.
True - though you could save one step by launching speed dial from flip open.
5. The SIM card in the GMS model has a phonebook that does not merge with the PDA phone book, so when you move from a traditional SIM card phone, you don't get to transfer your numbers over to your palm contact system.
Crap - -I agree
6. The web browser is garbage in so many ways that I can barely start. Let me just mention that you have to use both the keyboard and the stylus to use it. Entering URLs always requires two hands. It takes 60 seconds to start up and "connect". The phone function dumps you out irretrievably, erasing your session.
Though there are lots of other browsers you could download (I keep hoping Opera will release a palm version)
7. The desktop app requires a two-key combo to activate (unless you replace a quickstart button function with the desktop app).
8. Nobody can hear me speaking into the off-center mouthpiece if I hold the phone on the wrong side of my face.
You could rotate the phone slightly...
9. The speaker phone annoys people with w
Regarding driver's compensating for percieved car safety by driving faster etc. I heard a great thought experiment.
If you want to make driving really safe - you should make it compulsory to have a metal pointed spike attached to the steering wheel and aimed at the driver's heart.
Theat would make people think!
Try being foreign (yes - even Indian) and getting a job in the US. I'd guess it would be much easier to go from the US to India than vice versa.
I just took a pay cut for a job I like better.
-well sort of.
I now have the same job 4 days a week
Yes - I'm lucky to be able to live on 4 days pay. But how many others could do the same if they chose not to buy the new car / hifi / etc?
Have to say - it has been a wonderful life change, I can't imagine going back!
How about the law that requires the ISP to give details of the user of an IP without the approval of a judge? (or any other approving authority)
I like the translation - 'Mental Property'
Humour in the machine?
If you wrote something, be it music or software or whatever, and sold it for retail, and then found out it's been traded all over the Internet, would you be excited with glee at the "exchange of culture," or realize that the way you make your living is being cheated from you because there are people out there who are so used to the convenience of downloading whatever they please that they have justified it to themselves to get rid of their guilt?
You wouldn't object (or at least have any leagal right to object) if I published a portrait that i took of you around the world. Nor if I published a home video that featured you walking in a town (where I just happened to observe you).
Some artists consider the way they walk through a town to be important conceptual art. As society, we do not see fit to allow them to control the distribution of a record of their movement.
Similarly - we do not see fit to consider allowing people to control the distribution of their images (newspapers would struggle with crowd scenes)
With music - the question of how much control the artist should have is not trivial. Should they be allowed to control access to their private concerts? Should they be allowed to control who listens to them if they sing in the street? Should they be allowed to control the distribution of a recording of either of those?
As a society - we grant control to artists because we want to encourage them financially. There is an inherent tradeoff though - the control we grant them limits the access of the society.
One could argue that it would be good for society if we allowed free distribution of any recording and therefore 'forced' musicians to make their money by playing live / selling autographed CDs / being sponsored by Pepsi. This would probably mean fewer mega-rich superbands and more public performance. Probably less investment by large corporations - perhaps more investment by bands that felt they had a chance to get a piece of the pie.
Certainly cultures have existed where there was no protection of artistic creations such as songs. Rich oral traditions have evolved. Singers have gained kudos - but probably not become mega-rich!
I'm not advocating a position here - just trying to argue that the issue is less clear then it appears from within our current system!
I don't pay a licence. I don't connect my TV to an arial.
I get fantastic value from BBC Radio & BBC.com - in facct, I'd be happy to pay a fee for access to an archive.
He might have been mucking around with a wing for three years. I'll bet my bottom dollar it was not something that people would call training (e.g. concerted effort to develop skills to handle wing). The main thing to take from all the claims about speed, danger, etc is that this is a stuntman with an eye for publicity. Of course his life was in danger every second. Of course he trained for 3 years.
I'll do it!
I think the Rutan site actually talks about extreme skydiving as a possible revenue stream. If not him - then one of the x-competitors.
The best way to get all the ISPs playing like SBC is to switch provider - and write an e-mail to each (preferably to the highest placed contact you can find) saying that you're switching because you trust SBC to defend your privacy.
Very few customers communicate with companies - it therefore takes surprisingly few communications to start shifting opinion.
The good fight is seldom won through apathy
Visa and Masercard enforce strict rules that say that if you don't get the goods and services you paid for, your credit card issuer must deduct the charge from your statement and send it back to the seller.
If you buy a PC which includes an entitlement to a refund - and you don't get your refund - you should be able to charge the $199 back to the seller. This will involve calling up to dispute the charge and then (probably) writing a letter explaining why you have not got what you paid for.
I have had huge success down this route when car repair shops have charged me for work that turns out not to have been done.
The great thing is that it's simple and avoids the legal process. Your credit card company passes the buck back to the seller and it becomes the seller's problem to prove that you owe them money.
re GSm -
Sometimes it is worthwhile going for the best technology rather than the newest!
seriously though - I understand CDMA is progressing faster with data transport, but GSM is much closer to providing a global standard with all the interoperabality benefits that brings.
I own a cd, I can use it
My wife and I own a cd, we can ues it
My wife, my kids and I own a cd - can we all use it?
My extended family?
My neighbourhood?
My community?
where do you draw the line? Based on blood?
Based in shared financial comittments?
If the latter; My company/commune/cooperative owns a cd...
The judge would have to strike it down, but I'd love to see the tortured reasoning that would be required.